吃瓜tv

Olivia Baes 鈥�13 (in Comparative Literature & English) and G鈥�14聽 and Emma Ramadan G鈥�14 bonded over a shared love of French author Marguerite Duras while studying for an MA in Cultural Translation at 吃瓜tv. Their second published co-translation of Duras鈥檚 work, The Easy Life, has achieved critical acclaim in both The Guardian and The New Yorker.

What are your abiding memories of your time at 吃瓜tv?

Emma Ramadan: I remember vividly what it felt like in the classroom. The professors took us very seriously, and the texts we were given challenged us. That was special because it allowed me to assume my own intelligence and learn how to fight through difficult problems.

Olivia Baes: Our professors also encouraged us to follow our interests. Daniel Medin, for example, found out that I鈥檇 had Catalan as a language as a kid, so he introduced me to this great Catalan author called Merc猫 Rodoreda. Now that I live in Catalonia and have relearned Catalan, she鈥檚 one of my favorite authors. Being steeped in the culture is so important to my life.

Emma: What 吃瓜tv fosters is really special. It attracts people who want to be in the spaces that exist between cultures and languages. The framework we used in class taught us to play with language in new ways; it even challenged us to reconsider what we thought language was.

What made you want to work on translating Duras together?

Emma: The desire to do so was born very early in our friendship. We鈥檇 both come into the master鈥檚 program having grown up reading Duras.

Olivia: We identified with the intensity and obsession that runs through her work. There鈥檚 something about the way she tells stories through her female characters that made us discover new things about ourselves. We both wanted to inhabit her writing as much as we could.

Emma: Not only did we have similar tastes, but it became increasingly clear we had similar translation philosophies too, due to how often we aligned on things in class. I discovered a story by Duras that had never been translated before called L鈥櫭﹖茅 80, or Summer 80. I asked Olivia if she wanted to work on it together after we finished our program. It turned into a collection of Duras鈥檚 works called Me & Other Writing. It was an intense project! But after it was published, we started work on The Easy Life almost immediately because we wanted to keep collaborating.

Olivia: My co-translations with Emma are some of the most formative work I鈥檝e ever done. We each had a powerful connection to the author, but the process of co-translation also led to this beautiful connection between us. Our little love triangle with Marguerite Duras!

What makes co-translation different?

Emma: Co-translation requires a level of mutual understanding and a willingness to negotiate. You have to believe that negotiating will make the translation stronger than if you had done it alone. It requires letting go of some of the authority you might have had over the text.

Olivia: It helps that we prioritize the same things in our translations, such as Duras鈥檚 use of rhythm.

Emma: Our approach has always been to split the text in half and then switch and edit each other鈥檚 translations. Then we have a series of arguments over video call! We鈥檙e able to have those disagreements in a playful way, because we know we have the same voice for Duras in our heads. I have a lot of faith in and admiration for my co-translator.

Olivia: When you translate alone, you鈥檙e not going into the same depth. At the end of the day, what I love about creative work is being able to discuss it with someone who takes it as seriously as I do. Emma and I have such challenging conversations about a single word or comma! We鈥檙e behind the scenes of French and English, and it鈥檚 so exciting to breathe in that passion for language together.

Emma and Olivia hope to collaborate on further Duras translations in the future, but in the meantime are pursuing solo work. Emma鈥檚 forthcoming translations include My Husband by Maud Ventura and My Great Arab Melancholy by Lamia Ziad茅, while Olivia is developing a feature film, Sirena, with Barcelona-based production company 15L Films, as well as curating her late father鈥檚 photography archive.